


words forbidden

by besselfcn



Series: wild heart [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 08:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16719687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: One year of fuckin peace. That’s all you get.Then that fool idiot stumbles into your life--or, well, Dutch drops him into your life. Plucks him right off the gallows like a god damn apple.





	words forbidden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cptsdstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdstars/gifts).



> As with the [previous work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665358), this takes place in a world where Arthur & John are roughly the same age. 
> 
> [Re: Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings--I didn't want to tag "underage", because there's nothing explicit and their ages aren't directly stated, but they are young (late teens)]

You think maybe your daddy knew.

Maybe he didn’t even know he knew, but he _knew_ , somewhere in that rotten heart. Whatever shame he had living in there recognized and tied itself to yours; men cut from the same soiled cloth.

He used to hit you, that man. Not soft, neither. Real bone-rattling kinda punch. Broke one of your baby teeth clean in half one time and told you you was lucky cause it’d grow back.

Can’t remember now what it was you did. Forgot to feed the horses or somethin.

Anyways, maybe he thought he was doing you a favor there. Maybe he thought he was shaping you into the right kind of man--mean, and tough, and with a good solid punch of your own. Maybe he was trying to make you afraid of what’d happen if the wrong people saw you steppin out of line.

Maybe lots of things. Maybe sometimes you wish it’d worked.

***

You put mosta that behind you, though. Old man gets locked up in prison for larceny of all things and that’s that. You don’t see him again. Soon as the lawmen leave after telling you about it you’ve got your pack and the money he kept stashed under that floorboard and you’re gone. Take one of those horses all the way the fuck out west, ride until the horse complains and you gotta stop and let it breathe.

And then you keep doin that. Steal from towns after sun goes down, make camp outside. Keep yourself moving. No one’s lookin for you--not even your father, who always said he was gonna, if you ever dared run. No one pays you much mind, either, some skinny little thirteen year old kid comes riding into town. They look at you like they might even feel sorry for you, and that grates on you more than anything else.

It works out.

It near works out, anyway.

So maybe you get a little bold--maybe you try stealin from two lonesome looking bastards camped out near you. Maybe one of them pulls a gun on you before you can so much as blink and only looks like he don’t shoot you cause he sees you ain’t even old enough for a beard just yet.

“What’s your name?” he asks. Still pointin that gun.

You’re too bold, and too scared, to do anything but tell the truth. “Arthur Morgan.”

The gun lifts. “Dutch van der Linde,” he says, like it’s gonna be important.

***

They’re decent to you. It’s more than you could ever say of home, so it’ll have to do. You’re better off with them, anyhow. Bigger jobs. Better scores. Someone to talk to during the day, so you don’t go pure crazy. Hosea seems to like to talk to you; Dutch seems to like to talk _at_ you.

First time you go out with Dutch to a real job, one where you end up soaking the ground a few inches deep, you can’t sleep the next night. Keep seeing what a man’s head looks like, all mushed up. Keep feeling the kickback of a gun in your hands and tasting smoke every time you cough.

Hosea sits next to you that whole night. Don’t touch you or anything, cause you ain’t a kid and he knows you ain’t. But he talks a little. Bout something. Bout nothing. He’s with you there when the sun comes up.

***

(You think, maybe, Hosea knows too. Like your daddy knew. When he looks at you sometimes you think he might really be looking at that. That little blackened piece you carry inside your chest, worming its way through the rest of you.

He don’t seem to hate it, as much. He seems like maybe he’s sad for it.

You want to ask him if he knows how to rip it out for you.)

***

One year of fuckin peace. That’s all you get.

Then that fool idiot stumbles into your life--or, well, Dutch drops him into your life. Plucks him right off the gallows like a god damn apple. Dumps him into camp and says hello boys, this is John, he’s riding with us now.

Hard to see at first what attracted Dutch’s eye to him--he’s scrawny, greasy, looks like he’s been on the run longer than even you have and you’ve been runnin in some form or another since you was born. But, hell. Boy’s a sharpshoot. You’ll give him that.

That, and this: longer looks than you ought to. Biting remarks when he don’t really deserve it, just to see the look on his face, the way his eyebrows pinch together when he gets all mad. A hot feeling, deep in your stomach, when you see him lean back and laugh with his whole body.

Feels like burning. Like being god damn eaten alive.

***

Hosea meets Bessie. Dutch meets Annabelle. They’re both good women, the kind you always thought maybe you’d be alright to settle down with. But there’s no settling for them; they move with you all, become part of the gang as much as you are. Dutch’s boys, and their women.

Maybe you could have a woman like that one day. Maybe you’ll talk her ear to death like Hosea does to Bessie or maybe you won’t hardly need to talk like Dutch seems not to. Maybe your woman would move with you too, wash your clothes and clean up camp. Maybe she’d do more than that even, be competent with a gun, understand your life cause it’s her life too.

Maybe….

Maybe.

***

Then there’s that damned day at the river.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You don’t know what the fuck came over you.

He was just.

He was right there. Stupid doe-eyes. Foolish mouth. You thought maybe you’d die if you didn’t do somethin about it.

You’re sure now you’ll die cause you did.

***

You find yourself sometimes wandered out in the woods where no one will see. Drop yourself down behind some tree or some rock and shove your jeans round your thighs, take yourself in hand without thinking about it. Feels like maybe if you’re all the way out here it’s safer. Can bite into your fist and shut your eyes up real tight and think about hands pulling you around by your hair. A wink and a nod and a smile. A crooked-toothed grin and eyes looking up at you and John’s eyes and a mouth and John’s mouth and John and, and, and--

You come all over your fist with a punched exhale, and you dig your other hand deep into the earth, and you hate yourself so god damn much you can hardly even breathe.

***

Hosea knows. He must know. Dutch, too. You can feel it on your spine. You can feel it god damn everywhere, everyone you meet in town, every word that falls outta John’s mouth, every _pretty boy_ and _sunshine_ , all needles in your skin like you fell right into a cactus patch and everyone’s just watchin you down there now, lettin you bleed out all over the desert ground.

***

“Arthur,” John whispers, and he’s crawling into your bedroll, and you remember Dutch and Hosea and the women went down to the town for the evening, and “Arthur,” he says again, desperate, like he’s almost crying, and you nod and pull him in.

***

You don’t know what you want, exactly.

Do you want it all to stop? No--not like you used to. Not when this thing of yours was something in the abstract, something that belonged to you and only you. Now it’s got a name and it’s tied right up in John fuckin Marston and how could you dig that out? How could you leave that behind on the ground and not pull pieces of yourself out with it?

So you want it to continue, then. But god damn, that sounds nearly as bad. Sneaking around the rest of your lives. Crashing through tree branches and scrabbling over rocks to find some area well enough abandoned that you can get down in the dirt on your knees for him where no one not even God can see it. Feeling every time you look at him like it’s gonna start shining out of every pore in your body, this awful thing of yours that you can’t hardly keep contained.

What you want, really, is for it to be easy.

But it ain’t never like that for you.

***

“Arthur,” John says, and you wave him off.

“Dutch is right there,” you murmur, but he grabs you again, just the same.

“No, dumbass. Not _that._  Jesus. C’mere.”

It’s cold as hell out there. Your bones still ache from yesterday’s job. If you don’t get to sleep right soon you’ll feel like hell in the morning.

You follow him.

He takes you way out. Through forest land and down a hill. Across a river ankle-deep, makes your socks get soaked and you think you might kill him right then. Away from camp a good god damn way, down to some old clearing, middle of nowhere. And he stops.

“Alright,” he says. “Here it is.”

He lays down on his back, fingers tucked under his head.

You look around. “Marston,” you say carefully. “I know you got some kinda thing for bein’ bold, but this is too open for--”

“Get down here,” he snaps, “and look up, why don’t you.”

You sigh, heavy, and ease yourself into the grass. You can feel him beside you; not through touch, just the warmth of him, the presence.

You look up.

There’s _stars_.

There’s always stars, but these are--these look like somethin else. Framed by the ring of trees around the both of you, so far out away without any lamplight to speak of that they’re nearly covering the backdrop of the sky.

“I just,” John says, as you’re still staring up. He clears his throat. “I just thought you might like it. I dunno. The way you sketch trees and landscapes and things in that journal of yours, I thought you might--”

“Marston,” you snap, and you reach your hand down and you take his fingers and lace yours right through and you think _this, this is what I want, this pressed into a picture frame_. “Shut the hell up.”


End file.
